Arts & Inspiration
April 7, 2015
Page 3
2nd Floor Gallery gets a steampunk makeover
Marlea Trevino
Viking Sponsor
If you’re a fan of the “Step
Up” movies (at least, of the
dancing), you’ll probably
remember the finale of the
most recent iteration of that
franchise, “Step Up: All In,”
in which the main characters stage an intriguing
number that has a Victorian-era sci-fi feel with lots of
corsets, leather, rusty brass
accessories, brass-and-glass
goggles, top hats and feathers and shades of brown and
ivory. That’s “Steampunk”—
“an artistic expression that
mixes techno-fantasy, neoVictorianism, and retrofuturism,” according to
Steampunk scholar Mike
Perschon.
And that’s what you’ll step
into in Grayson’s 2nd Floor
Gallery this month, Steampunk MMXV. Jennifer
Webb’s startling “Merdian,” a
corseted torso, greets you at
the door. Then as you glance
at the exhibits ahead, you
fully expect fog (“steam”)
to rise up out of London
streets as you come upon
Dr. Frankenstein working
on his monster or spy Jack
Rebecca Jones
“Clockwork Desires” by Joey Spindle
the Ripper hovering over his
latest victim in a shadow. In
this post-apocalyptic future
vision, steam and spring
power are the norm. (Think
NBC’s 1-season Dracula
from last year).
Turn on Arlene Cason’s
eerie “French Flea Lamp,”
and its deep yellow glow
sets the mood as you ponder the sexual undertones
of Joey Spindle’s suspended
“Clockwork Desires.” Cason
used to make large lamps
for an interior designer and
has many leftover parts from
which she creates unusual pieces. A friend of hers
found the base of “French
Flea Lamp” at a Paris flea
market. The top of the lamp,
a sewer filter, she found at
an abandoned house. “I like
to juxtapose two total opposites,” Cason says, regarding her creative technique.
As the foundation of “The
Eyes,” Cason chose two vintage doll eyes from her collection. “I’m a picker,” she
says, who loves to peruse
estate sales. She plays with
different pieces with “no
particular end game.” When
various materials “resolve
themselves into a final piece,
[she] just knows it.”
An alternative American
Wild West (think Cowboys
and Aliens, the 2011 sci-fi
American Western) is represented in the exhibit as
well in such pieces as Cason’s “Pistola” and Wesley
Brown’s “Supreme Army
Commander.” The inspiration for Brown’s piece was
that “no matter in what era a
civilization may come to be,
a group of higher-ups become the man, and the man
brings you down.” Brown
describes the piece as “sleek
and minimal, with leather
and gold accents to give it
a wealthier look.” The little
details, though, belie its simplicity. “I also hand pressed
a ‘S.A.’ into the leather badge
across the left of the chest to
represent a ‘Supreme Army,’”
he adds. “There is a bullet
hole in the stomach area to
represent that one can stand
up to an army; it just takes
one shot.” Regarding its wall
mounting, Brown says, “..the
piece is preferred to hang on
a wall to give tribute to the
Supreme Army general who
lost his life in combat so that
Rebecca Jones
Victorian style meets the Wild West meets the Industrial Revolution in a fantastic mash up called steampunk. Pictured above: “‘Malie Luvlace’: Steampunk Adventuress” by Mary Ann Russell.
the viewer can form their
own opinions.”
Although the typical Steampunk piece is created
in “rustic” bronze, brown,
and brass, Brown used a
“gloss white base to give a
more royal appearance and
added brown leather and
gold for accents” over a paper mache form with Professor Steve Black’s wheat
paste for a “nice weathered
look.” (Several of the artists
whose work is represented
in the exhibit created their
pieces in Grayson art professor Steve Black’s design
courses.)
For his “Dolce Douleur 1,”
Alan Burris used a model
who enjoys living the part.
“As a collaboration, I have
her choose the themes we
work in. She has a separate
persona as a Steampunk
character called Dolce Douleur and does the Dallas
ComicCon in character,” he
notes.
Another standout corset piece is Averia Wilson’s
cardboard-based
“Mina.”
“While everyone else [in her
design class] worked on the
mannequins with paper maché, I used several examples
of corsets that I found on
the internet to decide exactly what I wanted to use to
decorate mine with,” she explains. “I saw that there were
many metal accents, chains
and leather used in a majority of the photos and decided that I should use those
elements in my own piece.”
Featured in Steampunk
MMXV are fifty-nine works
of art by thirty-six artists including: Donna Finch Adams, Kevin Berry, Wesley
Brown, Alan Burris, Sabin
Butler-Davis, Arlene Cason, Vicki Charlotta, Mark
Denison, Austin Duval, Jamie Flynn, Brandon Gabbert, Shelley Tate Garner,
Christian McGowan, Tina
Meschko, Wesley Milner,
Rose Milner, Eric Chance
Mobbs, Alexandria Morin,
Nita & Mike Musico, Taylor
Phillips, Vivienne Pitts, Jack
Ousey, Wileana Patterson,
John Pine, Zachary Presley, Lauren Ray, Jerome Reneaume, Mary Ann Russell,
Vivian Spears, Joey Spindle,
Kaitlyn Sutter, Jerry Tate,
Sammy Thomason, Kalee
Thompson, Marie D. Van
Arsdale and Jennifer Webb.
In conjunction with the
exhibit, a Steampunk Costume Party was held at Tupelo Honey in Sherman on
March 28 with music by
Jason Elmore & Hoo Doo
Witch. An Art Reception
will be held Saturday, 18
April from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Steampunk MMXV will
be on display from March
19-April 23, 2015. The 2nd
Floor Gallery is located in
the Arts and Communications Center next to the
Blackbox Theater on the first
floor (not the second).
Featured poet:
Anne Dering
“When Up is like Down”
Up is like down when upside down –
when your red balloon pops
or worse
when it escapes from your hand
searching for freedom across oceans with the clouds.
When the sun sets and the moon rises,
it’s a quiet joy or a happy sad.
You may be happy but then a shadow falls on you
and you realize you’re not really happy, but not sad, either.
You’re on the verge of falling into a depression
but you can almost feel a giggle tickle up inside.
Up is like down when you buy
deliciously beautiful white roses
trimmed with innocent white daisies.
A bouquet so elegant
you ache to take in another deep breath and
fill your soul with the sweet smell of their life.
But before you exhale you taste the bitter reminder
that you bought them to lay on your baby sister’s grave.
Up is like down when while you cry over her tombstone
you taste your salty tears melting into the short sweetness
of her sixteen month old laugh.
You smile inside your tears as you remember how
your sister loved to live,
to learn, to play, to sing, to dance,
to call your name.
But as soon as you laugh at those memories,
you remember with a cold sadness that
she also loved her new talent of walking and
she had just ventured out to explore beyond the open back door
when daddy pulled the van out of the garage.
Up is like down when you long to turn back time
and run ahead of her to shut that back door or hold her
for one second longer so she couldn’t walk away.
Or when you long to feel her weight
in your arms again while she sleeps
and you wish you never knew the weight
of touching a tombstone so small.